Weekly Washington: Elephants Now and Then!

photo uploaded to flickr by the Smithsonian InstitutionSo when my wife asks me what I did today, I honestly have no idea. Probably because I've spent way too much time pouring over the photos of old DC landmarks the Smithsonian released this week. (Smithsonian)

The big local news this week, of course, was the short-lived hostage crisis at the Discovery Channel Headquarters in Silver Spring, MD, just outside DC. Fortunately, no one was harmed except for the poor crazy bastard who was responsible for the whole thing. (TBD)

And oh no! My absolute favorite Smithsonian exhibit will be dragged into modern times, kicking and screaming. Western Cultures, 2nd floor of the Natural History Museum, will be closed starting September 26th. The exhibit, which was delightfully dated, was originally designed in 1978, and is looking increasingly out of place as the Museum rapidly upgrades around it. Fine, I guess. Minister Cox and I will just have to find somewhere else to hang out. (WaPo)

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How Many Freaking Smithsonians Are There, Already?

OK, the Smithsonian is kind of an unnecessarily fluid concept in DC. We often used as shorthand to refer to the museums on the National Mall, which is technically incorrect as not all Smithsonians are on the Mall and not all museums on the Mall are Smithsonians (the National Gallery of Art is its own thing and not part of the Smithsonian Institute).

But let’s say I want to break from tradition and actually be accurate on my tours. The problem I run into is how many Smithsonians are there really? Officially, the Smithsonian Institute refers to their “19 museums and the National Zoo”, so let’s go with that number. I can buy not lumping the Zoo in, as zoos are usually not considered museums. Just don’t make me buy into that old tour guide canard that “the zoo is not a museum, it’s a research institution”. They’re all research institutions, guys, one way or another.

So let’s try to get a handle on all nineteen. Our first problem starts when we click through to the above link. Let’s count them up, as listed:

    1. African Art Museum
    2. Air and Space Museum
    3. Air and Space Museum, Udvar-Hazy Center (oohh, so now I guess we’re counting them separately?)
    4. American Art Museum and its Renwick Gallery
    5. American History Museum
    6. American Indian Museum
    7. Anacostia Community Museum
    8. Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum
    9. Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery
    10. Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
    11. National Zoo (here listed as under Museums, let’s not count this)
    11. Portrait Gallery
    12. Postal Museum
    13. Smithsonian Institution Building, the Castle

And then we get two more, listed under a dividing line:
   
    14. African American History and Culture Museum (currently in planning stages with a rotating exhibit at the American History Museum, to open in 2015ish).
    15. Arts and Industries Building (currently closed for renovations, I haven’t heard a timeline/plan yet for reopening)

So that gets us up to fifteen (not counting the Zoo, and counting the two museums physically not ready yet). This counts (as it should) the off the Mall museums of Udvar-Hazy near Dulles Airport in Virginia, the Portrait Gallery and American Art Museum in downtown DC, the Anacostia Museum across the Anacostia River in Southeast DC, and the Cooper-Hewitt Museum in New York City.

So where are those other four lurking? Well, re-reading our list, I suppose we should break the Renwick Gallery off of the American Art Museum. Frankly, I wish the Smithsonian would as well. The American Art Museum is physically co-located with the National Portrait Gallery at the old Patent Office on F ST NW between 7th and 9th. They share the building, and it takes a really astute observer to notice they are actually two separate museums. Most visitors would never notice. Perversely, the Renwick Gallery, which focuses on crafts and decorative arts, belongs to the American Art Museum, but is physically located several blocks away near the White House. But you wouldn’t really notice this in their collective website, which lumps the two of them together. Annoying, but beyond the scope of our discussion. For our purposes, the Renwick is clearly a separate museum, no matter how the internal structure of the Smithsonian is laid out.

A similar distinction emerges with the Freer/Sackler Galleries. Listed as one Museum; they are at least physically connected, if only by a tunnel. They both focus on Asian Art and share a webpage, but as they are separate buildings I guess we can count them as two museums, bumping our total to seventeen.

So where are those other two hiding? Well, a close look at the National Museum of the American Indian reveals that in addition to their presence on the Mall, they continue to run an earlier incarnation up in New York City, the George Gustav Heye Center at the Customs House near Battery Park in lower Manhattan. And we’re one out away...

And this is where it gets fun. Lurking in the upper left corner I notice the “Virtual Museum” category, with the lonely “Latino Virtual Museum” occupying the only spot. And this is where I put my foot down, Smithsonian. I gave you the African American History and Culture Museum, as plans have progressed, architects have been selected, and they even have a pretty kick-ass exhibition up right now. But I’m sorry guys, just as Second Life is no substitute for the real one, a “virtual museum” doesn’t cut in my book either. Come back and try again when you get something real going with the Latino Museum. I look forward to it.

So, for now, we’re calling it at 18 Museums and the National Zoo. You guys can relax a bit on the count: you’re already world-class, you don’t need to over-compensate.

UPDATE: Thanks to Ian, Germantown for catching me out! I forgot the Natural History Museum!!!! The most visited museum, celebrating it's 100th Anniversary. Holy crap!

Alright, my apologies to the Smithsonian and to the basic concept of mathematics. That puts us safely past 19, with hopes that the Latino Museum will some day be less virtual and round it out to 20.

Feeding Time at the National Zoo

Ok, I admit it. I'm better than this. There is no way when I woke up this morning I planned in any way to write about the National Zoo. But then I flipped open the Post and stumbled upon this. I might have pulled it together, and gone on with my plan to write a nice, respectful series about Washington, DC's various war memorials, but then I noticed that there was a video of the incident. Obviously, I no longer had a choice.

So let's take a moment and watch it, and then we'll continue our discussion. You might want to have the kids step out a minute, unless of course you're looking to spark a discussion of the "circle of life" with them.

Now, in order to salvage whatever passes for self-respect for me, let me take a minute to extol the virtues of "real" feeding times at the Zoo, along with their other daily programs. Obviously, they change on, well, a daily basis, but take a minute and bookmark this link before you come. While it's highly unlikely that it'll be anywhere as awesome as a deer getting into the lion enclosure, I do enjoy catching the Giant Octopus feeding, for example. Although I will note that zoologists and I differ on what we call "giant".

No kidding though, if you have some flexibility in your schedule, try to time a visit to the zoo for one of their programs. They're a lot more interesting than staring at a Panda, hoping it will scratch itself or something.

Now that this is out of my system, let me go pull it together and give DC's war memorials the attention they so richly deserve. We'll handle them in their chronological order: The Vietnam Veteran's Memorial, the Korean Memorial, The WWII Memorial, and a (not the) World War I Memorial. And no, that's not reverse chronological order.

Halloween in DC - for kids

Personally, I see nothing wrong with slapping on a costume and wandering around wherever you're staying in DC, but if the pickings are slim near the local Holiday Inn, I'd recommend bringing the kids to Capitol Hill or Old Town Alexandria. Both are family friendly destinations that have been celebrating Halloween in style for decades now and combine a high density of great, old townhouses with a large number of enthusiastic neighborhood kids.

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Wildlife of DC: Bald Eagles

photo by Eric Kilby

Not so long ago, the only chance of seeing America's National Bird live in DC was a visit to the National Zoo. While still your best shot of seeing a live bird, the Bald Eagle is becoming widespread in wild around the Washington area, and if you keep your eyes open, you might see one.

What once was a sight to tell you kids about, has become almost commonplace. Just this weekend I saw several of them along the Potomac about an hour south of DC. And it's not unusual to sight one inside the city limits, either. Theodore Roosevelt Island in the Potomac is a popular place for sightings, and others have been seen throughout the city. My wife, who has no reason to lie, has even claimed to have seen one from our front porch on the eastern fringe of Capitol Hill, near the Anacostia River.

And as stirring as the sight is, it may become even more common in coming years. From only 417 nesting pairs in the Continental US in 19563, the population has rebounded so strongly that the Fish and Wildlife Service recently delisted them from the Threatened Species list. However, before you go out and grab a trophy, remember the Bald Eagle is still protected by the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act. I'm looking at you here, National Harbor. So, with Federal protection and something like 10,000 mating pairs alive right now, can it be long before seeing a Bald Eagle is about as exciting as seeing a Squirrel?

Now, if you are not hung up on seeing a real one; catching a glimpse of a statue, engraving, picture, or some other impression of a Bald Eagle is hardly a challenge. In fact, the real difficulty may be taking a picture in DC without one. Thanks to their symbolic status, they're a very common design motif throughout the Federal City. My personal favorite: just up the way from the Bald Eagle Refuge at the Zoo, near the Bird House, is one of only fourteen original Eagles that once adorned Penn Station in New York City. And if anyone knows the story of how it ended up here, please forward it along, I've been wondering about that one for awhile now.

And no, before we close, Benjamin Franklin never proposed the Wild Turkey as our national bird, nor does the Bald Eagle shift his gaze on our Great Seal in times of war. But we'll talk more on that when we revisit urban legends later in the Fall.